steering shaft play

[wit61]

My 70 Targa has a little play in the steering shaft. After pulling the steering wheel, it seems that the shaft itself has some sloppiness. It feels like a grommet is weak or disintegrating compared to my 73 which seems relatively firm but moveable.

How is the shaft kept in place within the column at the steering wheel end, and how difficult is the fix ?

[JCR]

This Pelican thread should answer your questions.

[glaverbel911]

Make sure you have the shim collar installed correctly,,,,, it's a common problem that it'll be in the wrong spot after someone removed the wheel and the end result,,, excessive play.

[neilk]

I bought the 928 part and it doesn't seem to fit in my '73. Am I doing something wrong or does the bearing/collar only work on '74+ 911S?

[JCR]

I have excessive steering shaft movement too, but just haven't gotten around to addressing it.

After reading up a bit on the subject, it sounds like the inexpensive collar and nylon bearing ($13 and $18 - both shown below) are for '74 and later cars, as is the metal 928 collar part.





Pelican sells a $165 bearing for '73 and earlier cars on this page (scroll down to the bottom of the left side frame window and select "steering"). Sorry, no pic to post.

Wow, quite a price difference! What's up with this??? Are we early folk gettin the "shaft"?
Is this pricey bearing really what we need to fix the problem?

[wit61]

Wow ! I can't see anything that would make the early bearing so much more expensive. I did order the collar after some assurances that it would also work on early cars. Now I am wondering......

Back from the garage....... Interestingly, my 73.5 has very litlle play yet also has no visible upper end collar. My PET manual does not show a collar. Hmmm...

[JCR]

I dove into mine today. It definitely has a different bearing that what's pictured above, and no collar. I have a Prototipo Wheel installed with the Momo adapter.

With the hub adapter off, the shaft floats within the bearing, about 1/8" of space in between all around for the hub collar to fit when installed. The bearing is pressed into the steering tube and tight against it. The Momo adapter forms the collar (it's a one piece casting) and seems like it should cinch against the bearing when pressed onto the spline by the nut. My bearing seems fine, as it spins freely against the steering tube. I think my problem is the adapter collar isn't thick enough to press firmly against the bearing. This is causing the wheel movement.

I may have the wrong adapter, I got it years ago and had it on my 356 until the orig wheel was restored. The 911 adapter may be different. For now though, I'm going to wrap the adapter collar with some electrical tape, increasing it's diameter, and see if that eliminates the play. I'll investigate if I need an early 911 specific wheel adapter and I'll get my stock wheel out of storage and check how it interfaces.

Hopefully I'll be able to spend that $164 on something else a little more fun!

[wolfturbo]

Try flipping the turn signal canceling collar 180 degrees. If you this installed backwards it will creater excess play. I made this exact same mistake when installing a Prototipo. When I flipped the collar over 180 degrees, problem was solved.

[JCR]

Well, my wheel is solid as a rock now.

I tried your suggestion Wolfturbo (thanks), and it did seem to help, but it didn't eliminate the play on mine. I had the Momo hub adapter installed with the stamped "top" indicator at 12 o'clock, the signal cancelling flange on the left side. I flipped it 180 degrees so the top indicator was at 6 o'clock and the flange on the right side. The shaft was biased to the right inside the steering tube, which I think is why this helped. This seemed to eliminate 50% of the play, but there was still some movement - thus, a gap between the adapter spline collar and the bearing pressed into the tube.

I cleaned the grease off the adapter, wrapped the outside of the collar with 7 passes of non cloth electrical tape and re-installed. Oh, I also wrapped the final pass over the forward edge so it wouldn't scrunch up when pressed into the bearing. It's solid now - no movement at all.

We'll see how long the tape lasts - I'll probably have to find a more durable material in the near future. I was going to hunt down some pvc pipe to slide over the collar, but it would have been too thick.